New Ebola vaccine shows 100% success rate

The World Health Organisation (WHO) backed a new vaccine that has now been seeing a successful response from people tested in Guinea.

Thousands of people tested by WHO in Guinea have showed a 100% success rate from a trial vaccine that fights Ebola virus.

The trial vaccine called rVSV-ZEBOV resulted to patients being virus-free within 10 days and WHO is now aiming to have the vaccine distributed for public consumption by 2018.

According to a report by Quartz, Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, said: “While these compelling results come too late for those who lost their lives during West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, they show that when the next Ebola outbreak hits, we will not be defenceless.”

The production of the trial vaccine is now being fast-tracked so more people, especially in West Africa, can properly make use of this. The published findings of the test show that the trial vaccine displayed a significant protection against the Ebola virus both in randomised and non-randomised clusters of people.

The World Bank pointed out that the cost of the Ebola outbreak in 2014 amounted to more than $3 billion across Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. It is more controlled now, and as soon as the new vaccine can be distributed, this may just be the end of the epidemic.